The place I feel most in it so far is still Westhaven. It feels like the revolution up there. I really do want to build an outhouse that drains into an algae pool I use to make biodesil I trade to my neighbors for fresh produce which I excrete in the outhouse which drains into an algae pool...

Dead Tower? What is that, like Whiskey Dick or something?

Aside from our neo-survivalist tendencies, we also talk real crackpot schemes. One good one we had was a rehash of the Corpulent Populism concept, combined with our idea of a turnkey Porntrapraneur service. The two ideas are 1) a publication aimed at converting middle class straight white males to the left -- a Progressive Maxim of sorts -- and 2) an answer to the revelation to outfits like Suicide Girls may not, in fact, be all that empowering to all that many women, since the girls in the photos don't get a real cut of the revenue, nor even the copyright to their images. We invision a system which would allow people to join a network of porntraprneneurs, with 80%+ of proceeds going back to the actual producers and the image subjects retaining full copyright over their photos. We also envision a magazine of inquiry, taste and opinion which would enjoy a collegial relationship with these content producers, publishing some racy pin-up images with every issue. Seems like quite a combination.

So there was that, and then I was out. I think the way I'll get back there is if the biz gets over the hump and I have time and inclination to write and Mark finally gets the fucking internet. I could occupy the Siesta and crank out many lines code and many pages of book. It would be good. Maybe.

San Francisco was fun though. Once the party got going everyone was stoned and it was loopy and loud. I think I was only entertaining for the first half of things. Joe and I played some word games. "Crack torch" became "freebase combustor" became "narcotic immolation system," which is a good name for a band we thought. Dumm is on his way to Amsterdam for a conference. Zack dresses really nice, or let's Jamie dress him really nice which amounts to the same thing and is a good idea in either case. I told the bird-picture phone joke, and only realized right then that the punch line -- "wing, wing wing... herwow?" -- could have kind of prejudicial overtones. Or maybe it was a flash of social paranoia. Who knows.

Anyway, I woke up and drove to Vegas, and met Mike of Trellon in real life. I like this guy. I've liked him since he told me in one of our first IM conversations that he has two rules for the company: No scumbags, no liars. Those are rules I can get behind. Plus he's a legitimately eccentric workaholic single-father (his 9-y/o daughter is awesome; charges me and everyone else $1 for every time we cuss) and a practicing Catholic to boot. I can get behind that.

Also met colleague Dan Moger, who I thought was two years older than me but turned out to be two years younger. He was a frat-houser in his day at Wesleyan, which means he knows how to tuck his pink collared shirt in, but isn't much of a back-slappin' keg-tappin' personal friend to the Quayles. Actually in previous days, he helped monitor the first free elections in Georgia. That's the former Soviet republic, where, unlike the member of our United States, there is no Poll Tax. Ho ho ho.

Anyway, it's been interesting. We're on some ambitious paths here, following the twin lures of being devistatingly effective in taking control of the government away from assholes and making the kind of money that qualifies you as "successful" in 21st-Century America. These are both things I'd love to do in the next year, but I've still got to get used to the idea in some ways. I need to find my own logic and through-line for it, my own terms for the deal.

Reading the second volume of HST's corrispondence, wishing I could get that as a motherfucking podcast. 747 miles tomorrow. G.D. it.